Yeah, That's Me

I was reading the reports of three journalism interns - their expectations when they applied, the collision with reality, how they felt about it all now that they were at the end. Kelly McCrillis's final comment really hit home:

"So few of us really want to strive and succeed - most of us would rather skip the striving part."

The striving part that I want to skip is the one that can be loosely described as marketing. I've always been the type who wanted to be discovered, to have job offers drop into my lap, in short, just do my thing and do it well and wait quietly for the accolades to come. But life seldom works like that. As Kelly goes on to say, roll up your sleeves, dial some numbers...

...and I would add, get comfortable with talking about your art whenever the subject might come up. Don't pass up opportunities to meet new people. You never know who they know that might become the lead you need to greater exposure.

I say this now as I emerge from a year of relative shrinking violet-ism, although I've had my moments. One of those moments is suddenly starting to pay off. A chance meeting last October that resulted in an exchange of business cards has resulted in a recent emailed invitation to be a part of a special exhibit in the spring. She's excited, I'm excited. But she never would have known about me and my art quilting had someone not drug me to that meeting and encouraged me to bring the above example of my work. Thanks all around. Time to roll up my sleeves...